by Steve Messineo

One of the things you are probably going to focus as you grow your business is marketing. You’ll want to promote your business in a way that it quickly increases the number of customers you have and increases your business revenue.

One way you’re not going to be successful promoting your business is if you’re using tactical marketing instead of strategic marketing. Tactical marketing is basically what you see all around you, i.e. the various avenues that people use to promote their businesses – TV, Facebook, newspapers, direct mail, Google Ads, etc.

Unfortunately, most people who use tactical marketing are just bombarding prospects with the same old stuff. There’s no call to action, there’s no attention grabbing headlines or announcements, and they don’t offer you any compelling reason why you should buy.

For example, if you look at a Buick commercial from a few years ago, you see Tiger Woods getting into a Buick after playing golf. He says a couple of words about the quality of Buick and that’s it. There’s no incentive for you to really go look at a Buick, there’s no information that makes Buick stand out against all the other cars. There is just Tiger Woods there and it is implied that just because he’s a great golfer, you should consider buying a Buick as well.

Same thing with those silly Geico commercials with the Gecko. He is walking down the street on the Brooklyn Bridge, says a couple of things, looks cute and funny and he is talking about car insurance or whatever. Geico commercials just bombard you with the gecko and his being adventurous. It doesn’t really give you any compelling reason why Geico is any better than any other auto insurance company out there.

It is great if you can bombard your prospects with the same message over and over again so maybe they will remember you, but I can tell you that the Geico commercials and the Buick commercials don’t compel me to go buy. In fact, I use other products instead of those. For all the money that these big companies spend doing this form of marketing, I don’t see them having much success.

Now in your case, you’re a small business owner or home business owner and don’t have that money to start branding yourself and bombarding people with your message over and over again. There’s no way you can do it and if you did, you would probably annoy people. Who doesn’t turn off the TV or change the channel when commercials are on? Most people do.

So keep that in mind when you’re creating your marketing message; tactical marketing only works when your messages have a strategy behind them. So, you need to create a strategic marketing plan. A strategic marketing plan takes your leads and prospects through a cycle of getting information and positioning you as an expert on the products and services that you’re going to deliver and giving them compelling reasons to buy from you.

There is a step by step process you need to take them through. It takes patience, understanding what type of message to use, and what type of offers to make at what points in time. This way your prospects are gently taken to the process without feeling like all you’re trying to do is sell them your products or service.

You’re not saying “here I am, here’s my stuff, come buy from me.” You’re saying “Hey, let me give you some more information, let me gently take you to the information process so that you feel comfortable with your decision to buy from me.” That’s strategical marketing and that’s really what you want to focus on when developing a marketing plan for your business.

We’re going to talk a little more about strategic marketing in upcoming blog posts and how you can really create a good strategic marketing plan for your business. So stay tuned for those.

In the meantime, if you want help developing a strategic marketing plan, I can definitely do that for you. I have a tool that actually provides small business owners and home business owners the skills to make an ad copy, strategic marketing copy that you can actually take, modify and implement successfully for your business without having to reinvent the wheel. It’s a program that offers marketing information and ideas for 45 different industries. You can essentially copy and paste these ideas and use them for your own marketing purposes.

I’ll be happy to talk with you and get to know a little more about your business to learn how I can help you develop a strategic marketing plan that is easy to implement and will get you to see a lot more revenue and a lot more customers sooner than you think.